BOOK-IT! PROGRAM BAGS $2,500 FOR LOCAL SCHOOL

Immaculate Conception School emerged number three among some 40,000 schools that completed the Book-It! reading program. For winning third place in the program's Principals' Sweepstakes, the school received a $2,500 check Oct. 1, as well as pizza coupons.

Steve Eck, Pizza Hut regional supervisor, presented Principal Tracy Dumey with a $2,500 check and other prizes during an all-school assembly at Immaculate Conception.

The school has taken part in the Book-It! program for several years, but had never won anything in the sweepstakes.

"We've been doing it at least 10 years," Dumey said. "Students can read at home and teachers are able to set goals for their classes. Not all the children have the same goal."

Each child who reaches his/her individual goal get a coupon for a Pizza Hut personal pan pizza. If the whole class meets its goal, it gets a free pizza party at the end of the school year.

Dumey believes the program, first sponsored by Pizza Hut in 1984, does what it was intended to do -- get students to read.

"Definitely," she said. "It's a big motivational thing for the kids to read."

The money will be used to help stock the school's hoped-for library. Currently each class room has a small library. Dumey hopes that the building expansion, which will give eight new classrooms by spring, may free up a room for a library.

"It's just a goal for the future," she said. "We hope that (expansion) will free up a class room in this building."

This was the first time a school in Eck's territory won.

"I was really almost stunned when I found that one of the schools in my area had won," he said.

To qualify for the Principals' Sweepstakes, a school had to qualify each grade, K-6.

Students thanked Eck and Pizza Hut by writing letters explaining what they liked about the Book-It! program. Faculty members also spoke at the assembly. The Book-It! program has seen more than 20 million children in 45,000 class rooms participate in 15 years.